Daughter’s shock as her father linked to mother’s stabbing

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Meghana Arunkumar is confronting the unthinkable. Her father is the main person of interest in her mother’s death.

“It is hard to know that your dad is the prime suspect,” she said. “I just want whoever is responsible to come up and take responsibility for what they’ve done.”

The 21-year-old is speaking for the first time as part of a 60 Minutes and Sydney Morning Herald investigation into the brutal stabbing of Prabha Arunkumar in western Sydney 10 years ago.

Police say there’s a mountain of evidence that points to Prabha’s husband and Meghana’s father, Arun Govindaraju, as the mastermind of his wife’s death.

But despite a decade-long international investigation, NSW Police don’t have enough to charge him.

“It’s a very, very bitter pill to swallow,” said Detective Inspector Ritchie Sim, who led the homicide investigation.

Prabha had been working in Australia for three years, sending money back home to India for Arun and Meghana.

Prabha Arunkumar with her daughter Meghana.

On March 7, 2015, she was walking home from work through Parramatta Park about 9.30pm, on the phone to Arun, who was in India, when she was fatally stabbed.

“The information would tend to indicate a targeted attack, so based on that theory, Arun arranged the murder of Prabha from India,” Sim said. Arun has always maintained his innocence.

Whoever stabbed Prabha has never been identified.

Prabha Kumar talks to her husband as she walks home from Parramatta station on March 7, 2015, moments before she was killed.

Meghana only learnt the full extent of the police case against her father during a coronial inquest last month.

“It was very hard because it all just blew up in front of me,” Meghana said.

If the police theory is right, the ingenuity of what happened to Prabha was extraordinary. Arun needed his wife on the phone, so her killer could identify her as the target.

“She may well have been aiding her own murder,” Detective Sergeant Dan Lovell said.

According to the police theory, Arun later told police he’d asked Prabha to call his mother’s phone because the battery was going flat on his own device.

“It is possible that Arun needed his phone service free so he could communicate with people who were involved in Prabha’s murder,” Lovell said.

Investigators were desperate to know what Prabha had said as she was being attacked. At first, Arun said it sounded like his wife was being robbed. But, police say, in the 10 years since, he’s never been able to get his story straight.

“He would provide one account to us, he provided a different account to the Indian police, providing different accounts to the media, none of which were consistent,” Lovell said.

Arun Govindaraju, his wife Prabha Arunkumar and their daughter Meghana.

It left police suspecting that none of Arun’s versions of events were truthful.

“They’re not accurate,” Lovell said. “It may be an attempt to misdirect the investigation by suggesting that robbery was a motive.”

Police say Arun also deleted phone records before coming to Australia to collect his wife’s remains. Then, it’s alleged he was caught repeatedly lying to police – most suspiciously, about a secret love affair in India.

“Love is one of the original motives for murder,” Sim said. “Was he lying to us to hide the fact that he was having an affair, or was he lying to us to protect or hide a motive from us?”

Meghana knew the other woman at the time, but thought she was only a family friend, not her father’s lover.

Learning the truth during the inquest was incredibly confronting. “I don’t think I want to think about that yet,” Meghana said.

Detectives looked closely at whether Prabha’s death could’ve been a contract murder, known in India as a supari killing.

“The hirer pays money to an organised crime member and provides sufficient information for them to identify their victim. And then someone, unknown to the person arranging it, commits the murder,” Sim said, adding it costs about $5000.

“There is evidence to indicate there was money withdrawn by Arun leading up to the murder. But that’s subject of an ongoing investigation, so it’s not appropriate I go into great detail on that.”

Knowing he is the main person of interest in the case, Arun chose not to travel to Sydney for the inquest, where the coroner ruled Prabha was murdered by an unknown person. He watched the evidence online from his home in Bangalaru with Meghana.

“I was just sitting on my bed. He patted my shoulder. He said, ‘You’ll be fine’, and we both had a moment of silence,” Meghana said.

The thought that her father could be to blame for her mum’s death is too much to bear.

“I don’t think he is involved,” she said. “I am her daughter, but I do still believe my dad loves her more than anyone in the world. I don’t think my dad has even a little courage to even put a little scratch on my mum’s hand.”

When confronted outside his home in Bangalaru, Arun denied having any involvement in Prabha’s murder.

“Is there any proof? Did I? People are talking,” Arun said, adding he would fight for justice for his wife until his last breath. “Whoever did it, they have to be punished.”

A $1 million reward is on offer for anyone around the world who comes forward to police with information that helps solve the case.

“Morally, it’s the right thing to do, but if morals are not enough, the $1 million incentive should get them across the line, which at today’s exchange rates equates to 56 million Indian rupee,” Lovell said.

All Meghana wants is the truth about who killed her mother and why, even if it ends up being incredibly difficult to accept.

“As I’m growing older, I miss her a little more than I did yesterday. I think I tried to follow in her footsteps, little by little, day by day,” she said. “She deserves better.”

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